Radio’s Age Problem

Yesterday Radio Inkfeatured an article with some fresh Nielsen research touting Radio’s reach at 93% of all Americans. The thing that caught my eye about this article was the headline “Radio is as Strong as Ever”. To me this article is proof that the radio industry is officially in denial of its age problem.

On the surface reaching 243M 18+ listeners every week sounds like a powerful stat. Sure that audience is spread out over 11,341 US commercial stations which makes it impossible for advertisers to reach all those listeners, but that’s a detail the radio industry conveniently ignores while touting its total audience glory stat. But that’s not the problem I have with this article – my beef is the age of their 93%.

If you look carefully at the chart below you’ll see the problem. 112M of radio’s 243M listeners are 50+ . . . that’s 46% of their audience! Now there’s nothing wrong with being over 50 – I’m coming up on the big 5-0 and still consider myself a valuable consumer for marketers to reach. But what happens to Radio in ten years when 100Mish of their listeners are 60+? At some point their audience will age out of marketers’ target audience.

Since 2011, Gabe Tartaglia has been a Vice President of Sales for Pandora. Based in Chicago, Gabe manages the sales organization and revenue operations for Pandora’s National Sales Verticals.

Prior to that, Gabe ran Pandora’s 17-state sales region in the central third of the United States. Previously, Gabe spent almost two decades in broadcast radio, including positions as Station Manager and Director of Sales for CBS Radio on the East Coast and in Chicago.

Gabe holds undergraduate degrees in Marketing and Management Information Systems from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

His other professional interests include mentoring and guest instructor work at YearUp Chicago, and publishing his own daily media blog.